July 9, 2009

Before transformation I was surviving. I was surviving and I didn't
know that's what I was doing. That's what I thought living was. But
it isn't. For me, surviving was living - that is to say, surviving
was synonymous with living. There wasn't any
difference between surviving and living before transformation.

It was worse than that actually. Before transformation I didn't
even have a distinction surviving. There was
only living ... and there wasn't anything else - so it
was undistinguished living to boot. With
transformation came distinction, and with distinction came
the recognition of surviving. Indeed, with distinction came the
recognition of the possibility of living distinct from
surviving. That may sound like an oversimplification
of transformation. But for the most part, that's transformation ie
that's
what's so
about transformation.

With transformation comes the possibility of possibility
itself. There's no possibility in surviving. That (I learned
later) is the essential distinction between survival, and
moved to
tears,
real, quickening of breath, thrilling, heart in your
mouth living. In my life, when there's no possibility of
possibility itself, in other words when living
is surviving, all that seems to be available to
me ie the only raw material I can ever get my hands on
to build something new with, is whatever's the logical continuation
of something that happened in the past.

With that fixed perspective (unknowingly to me) bolted and welded
into place in my
epistemology,
what masqueraded as living in the present was really little more
than extending the past, building on the past, and (remember, this
is survival after all) learning from the past.
Learning from the past includes both capitalizing on the past as
well as improving the past. In many cases (truth be told),
improving the past means avoiding the past entirely.
And all the while, there isn't any distinction between continuing
something that happened in the past, capitalizing on the past,
improving the past, or avoiding the past. It's all glommed
together in an amorphous undistinguished mass I called
living.

Outside of this clearly limiting paradigm, nothing really
new ever showed up. In hindsight (and hindsight is
always 20/20 vision) I can tell nothing really new
could ever show up. All that was available to me was
acquiring and having more things, and striving (again, past
based) to do things better and to do things
differently. But without transformation, there was zero
chance of inventing and creating new ways of being.
What's worse is without transformation, I had no idea there was zero
chance of inventing and creating new ways of being. I
didn't ever notice it was missing.

Being of what I considered to be an inquiring mind, I pondered
the question "Is this all there is?". Invariably when the
answer came (and I never liked the answer I got, but it came time and
time again anyway), it was followed by the inevitable subsequent
expletive "... but there's gotta be more than this? ...
there's gotta be ...!?".

What a difference a distinction makes! Before transformation, the
question "Is this all there is?" lands with frustration,
dissatisfaction, indeed with malcontent with the status
quo. After transformation, the question "Is this all there
is?" lands with fullness, satisfaction, indeed with
completion. In fact, after transformation the erstwhile
inevitable subsequent expletive "... but there's gotta be
more than this? ... there's gotta be ...!?" loses all
its significance and simply never gets posed at all.

To survive is to perpetuate a particular way of being. It's possible to
be very successful surviving - very, very successful - and
to acquire and to have more and to do things better and to do things
differently. However, once you're into this inquiry, to
acquire and to have more and to do things better and and to do things
differently is to be ever the same species rat - a
different rat maybe, a better rat to be sure, a
smarter rat indeed ... yet always the same species rat,
and never the possibility of a new way of being. And (what's
worse) surviving is never knowing there's a possibility of
a new way of being. In other words, surviving perpetuates
surviving as well as the requirement of having to
survive.

For me, it's simply not an option to go back to life
before transformation once the full possibility of transformation is
grasped. With the onset of transformation, life as we know
it is over. Really! There really is a
"before" and an "after" (or, as some people
like to say, a "below the line" and an "above the
line"). In my case, I saw immediately
it was all over for
Laurence Platt.
Simultaneously, just as obviously I saw I could use the
identity
"Laurence Platt"
to share transformation as my speaking ie as my word.

I'm careful. I watch out for this becoming "thing-y". What I
mean by that is I don't want this to become another fad. When my
expression of transformation devolves into
jargon,
when my sharing isn't real enough, then this has become a
fad and it's time to come up with new language, or at least to share
myself in a way that may be harder and yet is truly
authentic without relying on the ease of jargon.

When sharing gets harder, there's a tendency to veer off track.
But I know something which keeps me straight, and it's this: Who we are
is who we are, and there's not much we can do about it. We also have an
identity. We'll always have an identity, and there's not much we
can do about that either. Freedom from having an identity doesn't come
from having no identity. Freedom from having an identity comes from
distinguishing identity as identity. You can be just as attached
to having no identity as you can be attached to an
identity. In fact, in the case of the former, it can be such a glaring,
unwitting example of being unclear on the concept as to be
outright embarrassing.

I can choose to use the identity
"Laurence Platt"
to share transformation as my speaking ie as my word. I love
that opportunity, even though sometimes it's ... well ... hard.
Sometimes there are moments sharing transformation as my speaking which
seem hard. That's when I'm likely to doubt or to question my own
commitment. Realizing I do that got me curious about something. When an
appropriate occasion arose, I asked Werner if it's authentic for me,
once I give my word, to ever take my word back. Without hesitating he
said "You can take your
word
back, and what you get then is your old life back.".